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In reply to the discussion: Man shopping for coffee creamer at Walmart attacked by vigilante for carrying gun he was legally per [View all]AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Statistically most people don't, but they are such incredibly cheap insurance, and as you pointed out, they don't carry a lot of negative risk. I'm only aware of one person who has ever used them to endanger the public (radioactive boy scout).
In my household, they've only ever warned me the Bacon is done.
When I weigh the risk of those firearms, I consider the number of people who have them. By and large, the problem is suicides, and while a firearm amplifies the lethality of an attempt to commit suicide, I view the main problem as a health care/availability issue, rather than the implement. Countries with very low firearm ownership still have astounding suicide rates compared to ours, (culturally distinct reasons for this, but the potential is there, as humans are problem-solving mammals) so I don't view reducing the firearms as the most productive panacea. I think we'd get more mileage requiring the mandatory minimum insurance via the ACA, to cover mental health as well as the physical.
We've got a good 9-10 million people licensed to carry. Some 90+ million who own somewhere around 300 million firearms. That's a LOT of people doing things without breaking the law or harming anyone, that I have to weigh when looking back at the exceptions that do produce harm, to self or others.